


Angular Momentum

by lindmere



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Groundhog Day, M/M, Physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:50:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmere/pseuds/lindmere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dame Physics is enlisted once again to play matchmaker and provide hackneyed metaphors. Written for the prompt "Groundhog Day"; Jim and Bones take some time out for a picnic on the Observation Deck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angular Momentum

**Author's Note:**

> Beta reading thanks to [zerrah](/users/zerrah) and [sangueuk](/users/sangueuk).

James Kirk stared at the empty view screen and dreamed of Romulans.

Not that the view screen was really empty. As explained in agonizing detail by Spock, the ship was currently orbiting a ring singularity of hitherto unknown and theoretically exciting properties. And not that Kirk was hoping for combat—exactly—but before their detour, they’d been heading for the closest Federation outpost to the Neutral Zone. Even without the threat of Romulans, the mission to Kalan Seven presented a bracing logistical challenge. The  _Enterprise_  was stuffed to the gills with personnel and supplies for a complete refitting of the outpost, and beaming and shuttling everything to the right place while watching the skies for the enemy seemed more compelling than orbiting a gravity well. But when Spock had gone into comparative ecstasies over the readings, Kirk had felt compelled, as a professional courtesy and to keep peace on the Bridge, first to make a detour, then to allow him to formally request a longer stopover.

Spock was now staring at the sensor readings like a lover at his mistress—a lover whose actual mistress sat one station over on the Bridge, likely nearly as bored as Kirk but hiding it better. A whistle from the comm station made her jump.

“Captain,” Uhura said, “we’ve received a reply from Starfleet Command. We are approved to delay our mission by up to 18 hours to collect observational data about the singularity. Kalan Seven Base has been notified of our late arrival.”

“Thank you, Uhura.” Kirk pushed himself out of the captain’s chair, trying to make his body language convey enthusiasm even if his voice didn’t. “Clear the Bridge except for helm and communications and let the science team take the field. Mr. Spock, you have the conn. If you discover something interesting, I expect you to name it after me.”

“I shall endeavor to minimize our delay,” Spock said, as gracious a winner as always.

“Please do,” Kirk said as the Bridge doors swished closed. “And don’t let my ship fall into that thing.”

If the  _Enterprise_  had been less prepared for the mission, Kirk might have welcomed the extra hours. In fact, he’d planned it out to the last detail, a feat of logistics he’d hoped would show the Admiralty he was something more than their on-call crazy-ass miracle worker. He could have revisited every department, re-inspected every crate, but there was a fine line between maintaining morale and micromanaging, and he personally hated officers who strutted around trying to look busy. The original plan had been to grab a few hours’ sleep and star the ramp up for their arrival. Now, he’d been given those blissfully free hours he was always pining for, but could be damned if he could remember what he’d planned to do with them.

He worked out some of his frustration in the gym, and took a long shower afterward; that burned an hour and a half. He made a short and fruitless attempt to take a nap. He wandered down to the Rec Room, but found no one there who was likely to give him a fair match in whatever game they were playing. As a teenager, Kirk had developed great proficiency at loitering around and killing time, but as captain he found it hard to put those skills to use, as he tended to attract attention wherever he went.

After three hours, he gave up and went to the Medical Bay. McCoy was there, but not alone; he, M’Benga and a couple of the medics were threading their way through a maze of boxes, apparently conducting an inventory of the medical supplies bound for Kalan Seven. Kirk beckoned McCoy over, put a hand on his shoulder as if drawing him into a confidential and important conversation, and said, “I’m bored.”

McCoy rolled his eyes. “And I’m busy. Go find another little playmate.”

“I’m sure your crack team of medical geniuses can figure out how to do a job that’s usually done by  _robots,_ ” Kirk said. “Please. I’m dying here. Another five minutes and I’m going to go back to the Bridge and beg Spock to let me calibrate the gravitometers.”

“Oh,  _fine_. Just as long as you don’t want to—“

“Go to the Warp Engineering observation platform. Exactly. It’s the perfect time; the only way I’m going to get called to the Bridge is if that singularity decides to shoot at us. Let’s go.” McCoy went through his usual pantomime of unwillingness before handing his PADD to an amused M’Benga and letting himself be dragged away. McCoy waited with crossed arms and a long-suffering expression outside Kirk’s quarters for a few minutes, and outside the mess for a few more. He asked no questions about the contents of the satchel Kirk had strung around one shoulder, only commented, “I’d say you look like a Boy Scout headed out a camping trip, but I’m a hundred percent sure you were never a Boy Scout.”

Kirk actually did feel something like wholesome enthusiasm, now that he had a mission and someone to share it with. He hurried along the corridors as if they really were on urgent business, McCoy grumbling in his wake, through Main Engineering, past the dilithium chamber and between the water tanks, paralleling the Jeffries tubes on the long way aft. He slapped a few shoulders and got a few “Hi, captains” on the way, but no one asked him what he was doing there or made any protective moves to keep executive officer hands off the good stuff, which made Kirk feel proud. He’d earned the trust of the engineers and felt comfortable there, which was more than he could say for McCoy, who looked as if he thought some or all of it could blow up at any minute.

They finally reached the aft section and climbed up a narrow staircase to the observation platform. About 10 meters long, half as high, and perhaps three meters wide, it bore little resemblance to the well-furnished observation lounge on the hangar deck below. Its sole purpose was to provide nervous engineering chiefs a vantage on the nacelles, primarily at space dock but occasionally during repair EVAs in space. It offered nothing that sensor data and external video didn't, but Kirk mentally saluted the ship’s designers for their deep understanding of engineer psychology. The room was dimly lit, with just enough strip lighting to prevent bumping into the walls. The  _Enterprise_  herself had no illumination except her navigation and running lights; locked in orbit around the light-swallowing singularity, even her propulsion systems were dormant and dark. The tight orbit, combined with the narrow slice of space now visible, made the star field appear to be rotating past them, a pretty effect.

Kirk spent a moment in self-congratulatory contemplation and then, to preempt any complaining, began to unpack his bag. He produced a blanket that he spread on the anti-fatigue matting with a flourish.

“What is this,” McCoy asked warily, “a picnic?”

“Exactly.”

McCoy grinned, genuinely surprised, white teeth flashing in the dim light. “What else did you bring, egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off? Ants?”

“Better.” Kirk pulled out a couple of bottles of beer, a container of fried chicken, and another of cole slaw, a couple of forks, and a small LED lantern so they could see what they were eating.

“I’ll be damned,” McCoy said. “That wasn’t on the menu for tonight.”

“Captain’s prerogative.” He popped the cap off a beer, jabbed a fork into the cole slaw, and handed both to McCoy, whose uncomplicated look of pleasure made Kirk feel well rewarded for his effort. “OK, campfire under the stars. That calls for deep, heartfelt confessions. So admit it: were  _you_ ever a Scout?”

“No.” McCoy hesitated for a moment. “But I did Cotillion for a year.”

“ _Cotillion?_  Is that the thing with the white gloves and the dancing?”

“Yes,” McCoy said reluctantly.

“Oh god,” Kirk sputtered. “What on earth could have made you do that?”

“The greatest power known to man: my mother. Also, I figured out it was a good way to get my hands on girls. On their little crinoline dresses, anyway.”

“What a picture.” Kirk sketched it in the air with his fork. “Little Len in a suit with your sweaty little hand on the back of some girl a head taller than you.” He smiled at McCoy indulgently. “You must have been fucking adorable, so serious, with those big, brown eyes.”

“Never got me anywhere,” said McCoy, who might have been looking embarrassed, if Kirk could have seen him clearly. “I tried to kiss Annabelle Robertson in the coat closet and she stepped on my foot at least five times while we were dancing, in revenge.”

Kirk shook his head in mock amazement. “How a good-looking guy, a  _doctor_ , can be such a complete disaster when it comes to women…I should get the science team working on  _that_  mystery. If I’d had your natural advantages—“

“I shudder to think. But you didn’t exactly get stiffed in the gene pool, boy. Every reporter who writes a story about the defense budget manages to work your pretty blue eyes into it somehow.”

“They do  _not_ ,” Kirk said, a little too quickly. His fame was a bit of a sore subject, and he knew McCoy knew it, so he added, “And anyway, you know whenever she reads something like that, the stick inches a little further up Admiral Subramanya’s ass. Pike said she was all ready to send the  _Exeter_  to Kalan Seven because she’s convinced I get a boner every time I get near the Neutral Zone.”

“Do you?”

“You mean a  _metaphorical_  boner? No.”

McCoy choked a little on his beer. “An  _actual_  boner, then?”

“I don’t know. I get so many, it’s impossible to say if there’s a one-to-one correlation with anything, Romulans included.” They both chuckled, dumb twelve-year-old chuckles that felt wonderful. It seemed like it had been a long time since Kirk had been able to relax with Bones this way, covering well-worn territory in their shared past, or digging around for the few things they still didn’t know about each other from the time before. Kirk felt light, as if a burden he had not been aware of had lifted, and by the time he popped the cap on his third beer, he felt giddy, and not just from the alcohol. There was something in the air, stale and slightly redolent of Scotty’s pipe tobacco though it was, a pregnant expectation, as if time were waiting for him to do something risky and meaningful.

There were few enough tools to work with here. He rolled the bottle cap between his fingers and glanced around.

“Hey. Bones,” he said finally, reaching over to jab McCoy’s shoulder, as he seemed to have fallen into a similar reverie, or possibly asleep.

“What?” he asked with a start.

“See that little shelf thing halfway up the edge of the viewport?” He pointed, squinting.

“Where the rivet is?”

“Yeah. Want to bet whether I can land this bottle cap on it?”

McCoy was skeptical; he had a long history with Kirk’s sucker bets. “Depends. What’s the prize, in case it  _doesn’t_  turn out that you were welterweight bottle cap-tossing champion of the Upper Midwest?”

“Anything you want,” Kirk said, gesturing grandly around the empty room.

“And if you win?”

“We’ll think of something.” Not waiting, he rubbed the cap against his uniform for luck, and then tossed it--not a forceful throw but an easy, arcing pitch. Sure enough, it landed on the little shelf, which absorbed most of the force. But the angle was just slightly wrong; it skidded to the inner rim of the viewport and then rebound. For a moment, it looked like it was going to run out of momentum, but an imperceptible vibration jolted it and it overbalanced, falling off and rolling down the slightly curved deck floor into the darkness.

“Shit,” Kirk said, as puzzled as he was disappointed; he felt, baselessly, as if a promise had been made and not delivered. “When I get that pool table, remind me not to install it on the main engine deck. OK, what do you want?”

“You said I could have anything?” McCoy was wide awake now, his voice unexpectedly serious.

“Sure. Anything within reason,” he said encouragingly, holding McCoy’s gaze.

McCoy abruptly dropped his eyes to Kirk’s hands; a flash from the running lights glinted off his eyelashes. It was not the first time Kirk had noticed how long they were, nor how and when McCoy used them, in unconscious imitation, perhaps, of those coquettish belles of his youth. Kirk waited, patiently, while McCoy seemed to consider and discard a dozen things, while Kirk asked himself whether there was anything he might be too shocked to hear, or too reluctant to give, and thought of nothing.

Finally, McCoy cleared his throat and met Kirk’s gaze. “Oh,  _within reason_. I figured there was a catch. Then how about the rest of your beer?”

+++++

Jim Kirk looked into the dark nothingness outside the view screen and thought about Romulans.

Just hours from the start of a potentially risky (and at the very least logistically challenging) mission to the Neutral Zone, Kirk was locked in a low-key battle of wills with his first officer. Spock had requested a brief detour to a known but unstudied rotating black hole and the object had surpassed Spock’s expectations to the point that he had requested extra time to study it. Itching to be on their way, but hard pressed to refuse a direct request from a first officer who usually asked for so little, Kirk told Uhura to forward the request to Starfleet. When the reply came back in the affirmative, there was nothing for Kirk to do but give Spock the conn and make himself scarce.

He managed to kill a few hours at the gym and wandering the decks before realizing his unexpected appearances were needlessly distracting to the crew, who were already carrying out his orders with their usual efficiency. Short of holing up in his quarters, he did what he should have done in the first place, which was to find Bones.

While he was, by all appearances, busy sorting and testing medical supplies bound for the Federation outpost on Kalan Seven, it took Kirk only a few minutes and less sweet-talking than usual to persuade him to leave the chores to the capable Dr. M’Benga and go to one of his least favorite places on the ship. Wanting to reward his good sportsmanship, Kirk talked the mess chief into coaxing the makings of the picnic out of the replicators.

An hour later, Kirk and McCoy were lounging on a blanket on the floor in the dim light of the Warp Engineering observation platform, watching the stars whirl by. It felt good to do nothing in particular for a change, just share beers and chicken and talk about the usual things, bureaucratic absurdities and women and funny things that had happened on one planet or another.

“It’s nice up here. Peaceful,” Kirk said during a lull in the conversation. “How come you hate it so much?”

“I don’t like the engines. It’s like looking into the gears on a Ferris wheel; it’s just more than I want to know. Plus, it seems like every time you look at the stars long enough, you end up doing of those creepy monologues about space and time and our place in the big, meaningless universe.”

“Really?” Kirk turned to look at him, making out McCoy’s face clearly in the gloom, either because his eyes had adjusted or because he knew that face so well. “Do I ever come to any interesting conclusions? Because from where I’m sitting right now, space just seems like a good place to eat chicken.”

McCoy snorted. “I think you’ve concluded that space is big, time is relative, and command is lonely. You usually only do that last one when you’re sleep deprived.”

“God, I sound boring.” Kirk rolled to his side and propped himself on his elbow, so he could see McCoy better. “Sorry for making you my monologue victim.”

“Who else?” McCoy asked rhetorically. “I’m sure command  _is_  lonely. Surrounded by people every minute of the day, but every goddamn one wants something from you.”

“You make it sound worse than it is,” Kirk said. “But I won’t deny it’s been hard to meet…people.”

“People as in--?”

“Yes.” Kirk wiped his greasy fingers on his uniform pants, figuring the stains you couldn’t see didn’t count.

“You know, I admit I’ve been curious about how—“

“An archeologist we dropped off on Beta Anodia, the helmsman of the  _Zheng He_ , and a barmaid in that place on Starbase 114.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Kirk said solemnly.

McCoy gave a little whistle of surprise. “And how does that make you feel?”

“What are you now, a counselor? It makes me feel…grown up, I guess. You can’t have everything you want, and you sure can’t have it all at the same time.”

“I suppose.” Kirk could hear the frown in McCoy’s voice. “’Ships in the night’ isn’t the only option, you know.”

“What’s the other option? A member of my crew?” The enjoyable buzz was fading; Kirk began fidgeting with cap from his beer bottle. “ _That’s_  a great idea. Until it doesn’t work out and my friends and their friends are sitting at separate tables in the mess. God, it would be like some nightmare version of high school, which was already a nightmare.”

“But maybe it  _would_  work out.” For someone who’d been so miserably disappointed in love, McCoy managed to retain equal and active portions of matchmaker and romantic.

“I doubt it,” Kirk said stiflingly. “The kind of person I might be able to have something long-term with isn’t the kind of person who’d join Starfleet.”

“Really?”

“Really. I mean,  _I’m_  not really supposed to be here. It was just a fluke. If Uhura had let me buy her a shot, I’d be a long-haul mag sled driver and Spock would be captain of the  _Enterprise_. “

“And Earth would be blown up,” McCoy finished.

“Who knows? Maybe Pike would have made Sulu first officer, and he would have come up with an even better plan. Maybe if everyone hadn’t been so excited to see Spock roast me alive at that hearing, they would have figured out what the hell was going on around Vulcan, and saved it. We can’t know that. But we do know that I  _definitely_  wouldn’t be on this ship right now.” Kirk tossed the bottle cap in the air, watching it spin a few inches in front of his eyes, running lights glinting off its metal edges.

“So you don’t believe in fate and destiny and all that?” McCoy seemed borderline offended, but Kirk wasn’t in the business of encouraging superstitious nonsense, not on board his ship and certainly not in his best friend.

“Fuck no. The universe is a weird, random place and it’s a complete accident that there are sentient beings at all. Space itself—“

“Here we go.” McCoy tipped his head back against the wall in resignation, apparently settling in for the long haul.

“Oh.” Kirk stopped abruptly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to start ranting. If it makes you feel any better, I  _do_  believe that there are plenty of things in our control. That’s why we’re out here, right? To bring some order to chaos. I mean, right now, Spock is up on the Bridge probably making some huge contribution to astrophysics that I graciously allowed, and I hope he doesn’t forget that. Don’t you find that inspiring?”

“No,” Bones humphed. “The only way I stay sane out here is if I think things are the way they are for a reason, not because we’re stumbling around the universe just trying not to kill ourselves and sometimes we get lucky and do the right thing.”

McCoy seemed genuinely perturbed, which made Kirk feel a bit selfish for indulging in one of his occasional bouts of self-righteous conviction. An idea occurred to him. “That’s not the only other option. See that little shelf thing halfway up the viewport?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding pouty.

“Say I could take this bottle cap and throw it so it landed up there  _perfectly_. Would you say that was destiny?”

“I’d say that was drunken luck.”

“ _Drunken?_ ” Kirk wrinkled his nose. “This is my  _second_  beer. It would be  _skill_ , maybe with some luck mixed in.”

“It doesn’t matter, because you could never do that in a million years.”

“Wanna bet?” Kirk made a fist and punched his shoulder softly, goading him on.

“Hell yes,” McCoy said, rising to the challenge. “If you can land that bottle cap, you can have anything you want.”

“Anything. Seriously?” 

“Anything I have in my power to give,” McCoy said dramatically. “And if you lose, you have to admit that it was your  _destiny_  to become captain. And you have to ask Chapel out.”

“ _Chapel?_ ”

“She’s a sweet kid, and she likes you, but she’s not infatuated. It would be good practice for you, having to make an effort for once.”

“Believe me, being an arrogant asshole is a lot harder than it looks. OK, you’re on.” Kirk estimated the mass and drag of the bottle cap, the shape of the parabola he would need to land the cap as near to a 90-degree angle as possible. With a lopsided grin at McCoy and a bit of  _I can do this_  swagger, he lofted the bottle cap and sent it sailing through the air. It swished past the shelf a few centimeters in front, a clean miss, and landed lightly, flat on the floor.

“Shit.” Kirk had been so sure he’d calculated everything perfectly; he felt as if he’d both lost and failed to make an important point, though he was no longer so sure what it was.

“Chapel likes dancing, Russian poetry, and guys who don’t tell her C.O. the gory details of her dates.”

“That should have worked,” Kirk said, refusing to let it go. “There was nothing wrong with my calculations. My elbow was probably stiff; I’ve been leaning on it so long, it’s half asleep. What do you say—best two out of three?”

“No. It’s a debt of honor, the kind a gentleman always pays.”

“Gentleman,” Kirk snorted. “If that’s what you think Chapel is getting, you—or she—is going to be sorely disappointed.”

“Jim,” McCoy said hotly, “I swear, if you—“

“ _Kidding_. Ice cream sodas and a handshake at the door, I promise.” McCoy relaxed back against the wall, mollified.

“Aren’t you curious about what I would have asked you for if I’d won?” Kirk asked after a time.

McCoy took a pull from the beer, then held it up and turned it, as if seeing something in the dim light. “Doesn’t matter,” he drawled; alcohol tended to lubricate his accent. “Far as I can tell, you’ve got everything you want, and you’re pretty much lookin’ at everything I have.”

 

+++++

Captain James T. Kirk looked out the main viewport and saw nothing—a nothing that would have been enlivened considerably by a few Romulan warbirds, or at least a Federation planet perilously close to the Neutral Zone. What it had instead was a Kerr singularity, a type of black hole that apparently was to Vulcans what an exceptionally rare comic book was to a collector. That explained why they were stuck here for another 18 hours when they could have been speeding toward their next assignment, and why Kirk was now being chased off his own Bridge by the science team.

They’d been on enough deep space missions by now that Kirk knew the protocol for killing time: a long session at the gym, a long shower in his quarters, a long enough look around the Rec Room to tell him there was nothing interesting going on. When all those things failed to eat up more than a few hours, he pulled out his ace in the hole and went to the Medical Bay.

Amazingly, McCoy let himself be pulled away with less than his usual ill grace, and to one of his least favorite places on the ship. Kirk felt like he deserved a reward, and did his best to deliver one in the form of a picnic, complete with fried chicken, which Kirk could take or leave but was one of those Southern things McCoy fetishized. They sat, backs propped against the wall, on a blanket with the food spread out between them, watching the stars wheel by as the  _Enterprise_  executed another tight orbit.

“I don’t get it,” McCoy said between bites. “Don’t you get enough of staring at the stars up on the Bridge?”

“That’s different.” Kirk didn’t feel particularly hungry, but took a grateful swallow of cold beer. “Up there, I’m always watching  _for_  something. Here I can just look at them, look at the ship, it’s—I don’t know,  _pure_ , in a way. It makes me wish there were no wars and no trade missions and no bureaucrats, and we could just go explore. See what’s out there.”

McCoy was silent a moment. “Isn’t that what Spock’s doing with that black hole?”

“For fuck’s sake. I mean new worlds, strange creatures, mind-blowing experiences. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Must have left it in the pocket of my overalls the morning I left Georgia.” Kirk didn’t have to see McCoy to know he was making that tight-cornered half-smile. “You know, I envy you, Jim. You were made for this. This is the only place you want to be. A year’s gone by and I don’t feel any more comfortable than the day I stepped on that damn shuttle.” The pensive mood seemed to have come over him as well; this was something beyond his usual grousing.

“Hey,” Kirk said, reaching out a hand to pat McCoy’s shoulder and leaving it there. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think you’d feel comfortable  _anywhere_. But you’re doing a hell of a job, and it wouldn’t be the same without you. I mean that.”

“I didn’t think you were the type to get weepy after one beer.”

“I’m not weepy, I’m  _happy._ I’ve got my ship and my best friend and I saved the drumstick for later. I’m the luckiest guy in the galaxy.”

“Says the guy who doesn’t believe in luck,” McCoy said drily.

“Luck’s what you make of it.” Kirk popped open another beer for McCoy and one for himself, waiting for McCoy to put down his empty and then clinking the bottle rims together like wine glasses. He couldn’t remember now why he’d been so frustrated and impatient just hours before; this was a rare and welcome opportunity to spend some time with his ship, the stars and his friend, who he saw alone so seldom now.

There was a natural quietness about McCoy he found calming. Spock’s serenity seemed well practiced and hard won, the outward result of an internal battle. McCoy’s anxiety originated from without, the constant battering of a hard universe against a heart Kirk had always suspected was deeply and seriously romantic in nature. Kirk had been the source of that anxiety often enough, and in this particular moment could feel tolerably guilty about it. In the comfortable silence, McCoy had fallen into a reverie, staring at the revolving stars, and Kirk took the opportunity to turn his head slowly, sliding his eyes to the side, to study his profile.

“What about me?”

“What?” McCoy’s chin tilted up as he seemed to come back to himself.

“What do you think about me? About the job I’m doing?”

“Damn it, Jim,” he said, sounded a little embarrassed, “Is your ego really that greedy that you have to fish for compliments from  _me_?”

“People under my command tell me what they think I  _want_  to hear,” Kirk said, shrugging. “The Admiralty tells me what they think I  _need_  to hear. Nobody tells me what they really think. So here’s your opportunity: free pass for whatever you want to tell me, as long as it’s the honest truth.”

“You mean I could tell you anything?”

“Anything.”

“And you won’t hold it against me, like when I told that girl in the bar you had Coridian genital rot?”

“I held that against you because there’s no such thing,” Kirk said reasonably. “Otherwise I could hardly have objected”

“All right. What I really think.” He paused long enough for Kirk to wonder how bad it was really going to be. ”If you’re not the best captain in the fleet, you’re on your way there. You’re not only one hell of a strategist, you’re a good commander. You’re managing a thousand people and they all feel like they have a personal relationship with you. None of them want to be anywhere but on the  _Enterprise_.”

Kirk felt himself flushing. “But?”

“You’re burning yourself out. There’s not a fire in the quadrant you haven’t jumped into feet first. The Admiralty acts like  _Enterprise_  is its only ship, and you act like you’ve got to fill twenty crew roles as well as your own. This Kalan Seven thing, for instance—how many hours of sleep have you gotten in the last three nights?”

“Sleep is overrated,” Kirk said dismissively. "It’s a waste of valuable time.”

“I really don’t think you ever remember I’m a doctor.”

“Besides, the workload—that’s kind of the point of the Kalan Seven thing. If I don’t fuck it up, maybe the Admiralty will send us on more missions like that.”

“ _Bullshit_. That will be a whole, new category of things that only you and the  _Enterprise_  can do. And that’s exactly how you want it. It’s no different from the Academy, is it?” McCoy didn’t wait for his reply. “Hell, I’ll bet you were the  _best_  juvenile delinquent in the Midwest. You’re actually in competition  _with yourself_ , and that’s some scary, universe-ending paradox if I ever heard one. Not to mention a recipe for disaster. You won’t ever be satisfied, and it’s going to kill you sooner or later.”

“I hate to tell you,” Kirk said mildly, “but that kind of comes with the territory. There are two ways to make admiral: do the political thing for, oh, about 30 years, or do something big and heroic, preferably losing a limb or two in the process. Personally, I’d prefer option three, which is to do something really useful, not lose any limbs, but probably heavily piss off the Admiralty in the process. I guarantee you I’ll be court martialed a long time before I go bananas from the stress.”

“Jim, what scares me isn’t so much what you just said, but that you apparently meant it to be reassuring.”

“I know worrying comes as naturally to you as breathing, but here’s some advice from experience: worrying is much more likely to make you make the fuck up you’re stressing about. You know how sometimes you make that impossible basket, or throw your sock into the laundry chute from across the room, and then when you try to do it again, you can’t? People call that beginner’s luck, but that’s what you could be doing  _all the time_ , if only you didn’t psyche yourself out about it.”

“There’s nothing worse than pep talks on personal achievement from people who’re good at everything,” McCoy said sullenly.

“I’m not talking about talent. I’m talking about understanding what you need to do, and then doing it. Let me show you.” He groped around and grabbed the nearest thing at hand, and found the cap he’d sprung off his last beer. “OK, how much time over the last four years do you think I’ve spent learning to throw bottle caps?”

“Probably less than the time you’ve spent programming the replicator to make Southern fried chicken,” McCoy said, trying to change the subject. Kirk wouldn’t allow it.

“And do you think bottle cap throwing is something I have a natural talent for?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“And there’s no reason to think my ability to throw a bottle cap at—“ he glanced around “—that little shelf thing by the viewport is inextricably linked with some special destiny or fate or something?”

“Can we skip the fucking Socratic dialogue and get to the point?”

“If I consider the geometry of it, the weight and drag of the cap, the angle of the throw, I should be able to land this bottle cap on that shelf nine times out of ten,  _as long as_  I haven’t convinced myself that I can’t.” He waited patiently for McCoy to get it, but McCoy looked stubbornly unconvinced. “All right, let’s bring it out of the realm of the theoretical. If I miss, I’ll—I don’t know, suggest something.”

“Never subject me to a tedious philosophical discussion under the guise of a friendly picnic?”

“How about I go horseback riding with you?” Kirk made a face.

“Deal,” McCoy said, grinning.

“And what do I get?”

“For a one in ten shot at seeing James T. Kirk fall off the back of a Tennessee Walking Horse? Anything you want. Just name it.”

“Fine.” Kirk took no more than a moment to heft the cap in his hand, get a rough idea of the trajectory and drag, and then purposely, without waiting to second-guess himself, tossed it like a discus toward the protrusion in the frame of the viewport. It glinted in a flash from the running lights, for that moment, perhaps, the only spaceborne object in that small solar system guided entirely by will and volition. It hit the shelf with a tinny smack at the perfect angle to absorb all the momentum of its flight, and stuck as if glued.

Kirk gave a little whoop of victory, drowning out McCoy’s disbelieving groan.

“Damn it, Jim,” he said, cracking a smile. “I feel like the magician just gave away all his tricks, and I’m still not sure I get it.”

“We’ll keep working on it. For now, just admire. Oh, and pay up.”

“Right,” McCoy said good-naturedly. “Whaddya want?”

Kirk felt that he had earned the thing that he actually wanted. He felt that it was, indeed, a moral imperative to demonstrate to Bones how he put his philosophy in action, how he could assemble from disparate pieces the thing he desired and bring it about by will. Bones was his good and faithful friend, his loyal shipmate, his trustworthy doctor. He was, moreover, a handsome man who seemed bent on wasting the best years of his life in a penitential regret that frustrated Kirk in more ways than one.

There was a breathless moment in which Kirk was conscious of choosing, making a million other possibilities fall away like shards of broken glass.

“Kiss me,” he said.

“ _What_?” McCoy’s amazement was pure, without a touch of shock or indignation.

“Or let me kiss you. It works out the same in the end.” McCoy’s lips were parted, perhaps in wordless astonishment, but it was a passable simulation of invitation, and Bones was a man of honor in any case. Kirk braced himself with a hand on the floor so he could lean in smoothly and inexorably, as though Bones’ mouth were the point everything else had collapsed into and the gravity were pulling him in. His lips felt as soft as Kirk expected, but everything else was completely new: the taste of his mouth, the slight scratch of his beard, the way the tendons flexed in the back of his neck when Kirk wrapped a hand around it.

He swept the remains of the picnic away with his arm, sending the little lamp and the empty bottles rolling away, and launched himself at Bones, knocking him over. It wasn’t graceful, but it was effective; he landed more or less where he wanted, half on top of him, mouth pressing down on his, hand reaching up under his uniform, unable to get skin under his hands fast enough.

“Wait, wait,” McCoy gasped wetly, pushing at his shoulders, trying to form words in the milliseconds when his lips weren’t otherwise engaged.

“What?” Kirk paused, all coiled tension waiting to start again, releasing only his mouth.

“You better mean this,” McCoy hissed, enough of the familiar Bones indignation to focus Kirk’s wandering attention. “You better not be fucking around.”

“I do. I’m not.” Kirk said with unfeigned sincerity. “I swear, Bones, I wouldn’t do that to you.” He punctuated it with a kiss, on the cheek this time. “I’ve thought about it,  _a lot_ , and it never seemed like the right time, but now— Shit, can’t we talk about this later?”

It wasn’t eloquent, or philosophical, but it seemed to be all the persuasion he needed. “OK. Sure,” Bones said. He shot his fingers through Kirk’s hair and pulled him down, kissing him with will and purpose, while Kirk traced the familiar planes of his chest and belly with his hands for the first time.

“Take your shirt off,” Kirk whispered urgently.

“Take  _your_  shirt off.” McCoy’s eyes, when Kirk paused to look, were wild, challenging; they held the promise of a sexual fearlessness that escalated Kirk’s expectations so sharply that he gasped.

“Whatever you say.” Kirk stripped off both uniform shirts and tossed them away, waited while McCoy struggled back to a seated position and did the same. A second later McCoy wrapped his arms around him, as desperate for the touch of skin as Kirk was himself. The embrace was tight enough for Kirk to feel the shape of his muscles, feel them flex as they exerted pressure, and it was wonderful.

“More,” he whispered. “Just like that.”

McCoy did as he asked, tightening his grip just short of crushing, and Kirk felt his  arms begin to tremble.

“Oh my god, Jim,” McCoy gasped into his shoulder.

“I know,” Kirk said, running a hand up through his hair. “Me too. It’s OK.” McCoy let up enough that he could drop his mouth into the curve between Kirk’s neck and shoulder, kissing and grazing with his teeth, circling around to the hollow at the base of his throat and back again.

“I have a thing for your neck,” he said between kisses, as if an explanation were needed.

Kirk laughed hoarsely. “I hope you also have a thing for  _other_  things of mine.” He ran his hands down the curve of McCoy’s spine, smooth and cool thanks to the chill of space that even the ship’s prodigious environmental systems couldn’t keep out of the air. He stopped when his hands hit the waistband of McCoy’s pants, and said, “These. Off. Now,” clear as an order.

It had taken Kirk all of three days in Starfleet to conclude that there was no graceful way to get out of a uniform. Apparently McCoy knew it, too; they separated long enough to strip off boots, pants, and briefs, Kirk with quiet efficiency, Bones with the half-distracted intensity that characterized almost everything he did without a tricorder in his hand. Kirk fleetingly regretted the lack of a bed, wanting to see Bones stretched out before him, nothing higher than his erection, before this moment as rare in his sight as a San Francisco snow; the lack of light, in which he could have seen the shape and shading of his skin. He made use of what he had, which were his hands and the weight of his body, pushing McCoy over and under him, his favorite place for his lovers, not because of a need for control but because it left all his options open. Kirk worked best within the full range of the possible. But McCoy, contrary as ever, had other ideas; he put one hand behind Kirk’s shoulder and the other on his waist and flipped him, using a technique that wouldn’t have gone far in Spock’s annoyingly asexual Vulcan wrestling demonstrations, but was more than effective against a completely willing subject.

Kirk landed on his back light as a feather, buoyant with bubbling arousal at the thought of McCoy, assertive, demanding, wanting to take something or anything that Kirk might have. When McCoy, bracing himself with one arm, reached toward his own groin with the other, Kirk thought for a deliciously shocked moment that he might have been planning to jerk off  _on_  him; but when he felt McCoy’s hand graze the underside of his cock, gasping when he felt his fingers close around both their lengths, pressing them together, it was so perfectly sweet that he regretted not leaving everything to McCoy from the beginning.

It couldn’t last long; things that good never did. In any case, the thin carpeting was scratchy under his back, and Bones’ left arm, strong as it was, would soon get tired of holding his weight. Bones closed his hand around them both, squeezing, not jerking because they had no lubrication. But the pressure was more than enough; the pressure and the mass of Bones’ body above his, the little helpless sounds he was making, the whirl of stars over his shoulder, and beneath it all the bass of the ship’s engines, the cosmic hum of this particular little universe.

He decided to come, and did. It had been more intense before, but never more perfect. McCoy, startled, gripped a bit more tightly, no doubt struggling to process so many things at once, the sudden warmth and wetness at his groin, the way Kirk’s fingertips were tracing over his chest and tugging lightly at his nipples. Kirk hated to see him struggle when it was all so easy.

“Come,” he whispered. “Come now.”

A wordless breath, and he did: Kirk could feel the ripple go through Bones’ body, the contraction of his muscles. He lost his grip and Kirk was directly in the line of fire, and it was wonderful to feel him shoot like that, as if Kirk were coming again himself. McCoy’s arm gave out and he collapsed against Kirk, heavy and warm and sticky and human, so good to feel after the cool, odorless, filtered air.

Kirk stroked down his back, already feeling the rebel insinuations of  _next time._  Next time, there would be a bed, and a light, and he’d be able to see McCoy’s face, feel the shape of his mouth when he came. Next time there’d be lube and hot water and if the thing on Kalan Seven worked out right, maybe a few hours’ shore leave and a bed that didn’t have a comm panel half a meter away. He’d be able to get Bones to hold him down like he meant it, fuck him long and hard, and afterward they could clean up and fall asleep in the same bed. Next time.

Bones’ weight was becoming distracting; Kirk was afraid he might be falling asleep. “Hey,” he said, gentling prodding a rib with his finger.

“Mmm. Sorry.” Bones rolled off, a glutinous detachment that had them both making little “eww” noises and chuckling. Kirk inched over so he could rest his head on McCoy’s shoulder. McCoy stroked his hair lazily.

“Still happy?” McCoy asked, voice thick and dreamy.

“No, I’m pissed. We could have been doing this for four years.”

“Everything happens for a reason,” McCoy said vaguely.

“No, it doesn’t. Things happen; either you  _let_  them happen, or you  _make_  them happen. That’s all there is for a reason.”

“Fine. Then I’m glad you made this happen.” Kirk noted, for future reference, how indulgently amenable McCoy was after sex.

“Wasn’t me.”

“Who, then?” Bones must have felt his smile in some twitch of muscle deep in his body, because he said, “Oh, no. You’re going to say the ship, or space, or something. That’s not fair. You can’t give me shit for believing in destiny and then personify some pile of bolts. You want romantic claptrap? Talking about a ship like it’s a woman is ten times worse than talking about a  _woman_  like she’s a woman.”

“No,” Kirk said slowly, the endorphins finally ebbing and leaving him cleansed and warm as a beach at low tide. “I wasn’t going to say weird, inappropriate things about the ship.” That wasn’t strictly true; she was looking beautiful tonight, her familiar lines barely visible in soft glows and flashes of white and blue, engines dormant while she slept in the arms of gravity and the stars glided by. It was as peaceful as an Iowa night, when he used to lie on the grass and think about his mother out there somewhere, the ship she was on no more than an idea in his head, a picture that he kept taped above his bed.

Bones seemed more than content to lie there, running a hand lightly over the parts of Kirk’s body within reach, leaning over occasionally to place a nuzzling kiss against his hair. His post-coital affection and the fact that he didn’t seem interested in sleep (and therefore might be interested in something else, again, very soon), were simply two more pieces of evidence that this had been a very good idea. For now, though, it was sufficient unto itself, and he had no desire to move, only to keep admiring his ship, his life, and his stars.

Under the dark wing of the  _Enterprise_ , a cluster of stars appeared. They were beautiful, and they hadn’t been there before.

Kirk sat suddenly bolt upright. Bones, startled, gave a little reviving huff and propped himself up on his elbows.

“What is it? Forgot a meeting?”

“No,” Kirk said frowning, but not at him. “It’s our orbit. It’s all wrong.”

“How can you tell?”

“That cluster of stars, it’s-- Also, the shape of the—It doesn’t matter, I just  _know_.” Without waiting for McCoy’s objection, Kirk scrambled to his feet and bolted for the door.

“Jim! Clothes!”

“Oh, right.” It seemed like a trivial worry with so much at stake, but tradition demanded certain protocols be observed. He grudgingly pulled on his pants and undershirt, grabbed his boots, and rushed out, bare feet thudding on the metal decking as he sprinted down the corridors, which had never seemed so long. Luckily, there were plenty of comm panels in Engineering. He skidded to a halt at the first one he saw and pounded his fist against it.

“Kirk to Bridge.”

“Sulu here.” Of course. Sulu would have stayed for the “fun.”

“Pull out us out of the orbit of the black hole immediately, full impulse power. Do you understand?”

“Aye, captain. Engaging impulse engines.” Kirk had never felt such gratitude that, among his unusually mouthy Bridge crew, Sulu at least knew how to follow an order. He spared a moment to pull on his boots and another to watch McCoy clanging toward him, uniform shirt caught in his waistband and hair falling in his eyes.

“Jim, what the hell—“

“Bridge. Now.” Not quite at a run but still with all due speed, Kirk made his way to the nearest turbolift. It was a testament to his crew—or perhaps a reflection on their captain—that his sudden, half-undressed appearance provoked no more than a few raised eyebrows.

The turbolift doors swished shut and Kirk found himself with a scant 20 seconds to remedy McCoy’s exceedingly suspicious appearance. He freed McCoy’s shirt, wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeves, brushed his hair back into the closest approximation he could manage without the aid of whatever alien goo McCoy used. He bore it all with no reaction except a slightly stunned expression until Kirk finished with a quick kiss on the lips.

“Are you  _nuts_?” At least he sounded completely normal.  

“Sorry. That was for luck.” A second later the door opened onto the Bridge, and the faces of a half-dozen unfamiliar scientists bracketed by Spock, Uhura and Sulu. Kirk headed straight for his chair.

“Sulu, where are we?”

“We’re 4.46 AUs from the black hole, bearing 41 mark 124, holding at inertial cruising speed, captain.”

“Good job, Mr. Sulu.” Kirk let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding since the Engineering deck. He could feel McCoy hovering a meter behind his left shoulder, and at least three pairs of wide eyes watching him with intense curiosity. Naturally, it was Spock who broke the pregnant silence.

“Captain, I infer that you believe that the ship was in danger while in orbit around the black hole.”

“You infer correctly, Mr. Spock.” He waited for the barrage of gracefully worded objections; now that they were safe, it didn’t matter.

“I can only deduce that you were monitoring the same real-time observational data as the science team. In that case, I must congratulate you. Dr. Saxena had just reached the conclusion that our path was not following any of the known patterns for orbit around a ring singularity. It is an important discovery but one that suggests we could not have predicted the  _Enterprise_ ’s future position with certainty.” As usual, it took Kirk a few moments to unwrap the layers of Spock’s speech. It might have been a sarcastic comment on Kirk’s known lack of interest in astrophysics, an elliptical apology for having inadvertently put the ship in danger, or, most charitably, a welcome cover story the captain’s  _dishabille_  and sudden appearance with his equally disheveled CMO. Whatever it was, Kirk was content that he appeared at least slightly less crazy than he had a minute earlier. He was, in fact, content with every aspect of his local reality at this particular moment: his ship safe, her controls under his hands, the warm afterimage of McCoy’s body on his, Uhura trying and failing to hide a grin behind her hand.

Into the silence came the faint but unmistakable sound of McCoy zipping up his fly.

Kirk smiled; it was the nature of things not to remain perfect. Change was the only constant, after all.

“Mr. Sulu, resume our original course to Kalan Seven when ready. Lieutenant Uhura, inform Kalan Base once we have a new arrival time. And Dr. McCoy?”

“Yes, captain?” McCoy took a few steps forward, to where Kirk could see him. He looked as relaxed as Kirk had ever seen him on the Bridge.

“I think I owe you a rematch. Best two out of three?”

**Author's Note:**

>  _Nerdy Note #1_ : As far as I know, there are no blueprints out yet for the Alternate!1701, so I based the deck plan more or less on the 1701a. The Engineering Observation Platform does not exist on those plans, but it doesn’t  _not_  exist, either.
> 
>  _Nerdy Note #2_ : Kerr black holes (also called rotating black holes or ring singularities) are a theoretical construct of the physicist Roy Kerr. Since an object with angular momentum cannot collapse into a single point, a spinning black hole would be 0 thickness but have some radius, making it theoretically possible to pass through without getting all spaghettified. To this, the physicist brings up all sorts of objections, such as how you’d get ripped apart by tidal forces first, and how they’re unlikely to form in the first place (they are not currently known to actually exist). The sci fi writer says “traversable black hole! OMG time travel!11!” IF they existed and IF you could travel through them and IF the result would be to send you to a different time, that time would be the future. But still. Kerr black holes are of course quite different from Orci-Kurtzman singularities, which form out of tiny drops of not particularly dense liquid matter, are traversable (except when they’re not), and send you into random times in the past.


End file.
